Sunday, June 28, 2015

Think what you will about Pope Francis’s foray into climate
change politics, he is making no effort to appear to be fair and balanced.

Having already resurrected the South American radical
leftist doctrine of liberation theology—an unholy amalgam of Catholicism and
Marx—he has now chosen extreme leftist firebrand Naomi Klein to co-chair this
Friday’s Vatican conference on climate change.

She is
one of the world’s most high-profile social activists and a ferocious critic of
21st-century capitalism. He is one of the pope’s most senior aides and a
professor of climate change economics. But this week the secular radical will
join forces with the Catholic cardinal in the latest move by Pope Francis to
shift the debate on global warming.

Naomi Klein and Cardinal Peter Turkson are to lead a
high-level conference on the environment, bringing together churchmen,
scientists and activists to debate climate change action. Klein, who campaigns
for an overhaul of the global financial system to tackle climate change, told
the Observer she was
surprised but delighted to receive the invitation from Turkson’s office.

At a time when the horrors of Communism cannot be denied,
Klein continues to wage war against capitalism. Communism may have murdered
around 100 million people and destroyed the lives of many, many more, but Klein
refuses to accept reality. She has decided that capitalism will destroy
everyone and everything because it has made it impossible to combat global
climate change.

Otherwise she would have to admit that she and her
fellow-travelers were grievously wrong, and people like Klein are constitutionally
incapable of doing so.

For example:

Indeed,
the three pillars of the neoliberal age—privatization of the public sphere,
deregulation of the corporate sector, and the lowering of income and corporate
taxes, paid for with cuts to public spending—are each incompatible with many of
the actions we need to take to bring our emissions to safe levels. And together
these pillars form an ideological wall that has blocked a serious response to
climate change for decades.

One ought not to have to say it, but in the post Mao era in
China privatization succeeded in feeding hundreds of millions of people and
raising nearly a billion people out of abject poverty. So naturally, Klein wants to return to Communism.

Among her other pronouncements, Klein attacked the Iraq war
as an effort to bring capitalism to Iraq. As Wikipedia notes, she pledged her
allegiance to Muqtada as Sadr:

Klein's
August 2004 "Bring Najaf to New York", published in The Nation, argued that Muqtada
Al Sadr's Mahdi Army "represents the overwhelmingly
mainstream sentiment in Iraq."[34] She
went on to say "Yes, if elected Sadr would try to turn Iraq into a
theocracy like Iran, but for now his demands are for direct elections and an
end to foreign occupation"

Obviously, Klein is more than just another committed
leftist. Her support for a man who would turn Iraq into a theocracy, given the
consequences for women and gays, makes her a crackpot and a flake.

She is an ideological fanatic whose hatred of America and free
market capitalism is so great that she prefers to consign people to an Iranian
theocracy rather than to a liberal democracy. Since hatred knows no limits she
has no concern for human life or human beings and should be disqualified from appearing at
international forums on political economy.

By making Klein, a notorious atheist, a co-chair of a
conference the Pope discredits himself.

Naturally, Klein is also a committed anti-Semite. Comparing
Israeli policy toward Palestinian terrorists to South African apartheid she
supports the Boycott Divest Sanction movement against what she calls Israeli “criminality.”

In 2009 she wrote:

The
best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become
the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South
Africa. In July 2005 a huge coalition of Palestinian groups laid out plans to
do just that. They called on "people of conscience all over the world to
impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those
applied to South Africa in the apartheid era". The campaign Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions was born.

Every
day that Israel pounds Gaza brings
more converts to the BDS cause - even among Israeli Jews. In the midst of the
assault roughly 500 Israelis, dozens of them well-known artists and scholars,
sent a letter to foreign ambassadors in Israel. It calls for "the adoption
of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions" and draws a clear
parallel with the anti-apartheid struggle. "The boycott on South Africa
was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves ... This international
backing must stop."

One does not, in her article read a single word condemning
Palestinian terrorism. About the fact that Hamas has pledged not only to
destroy Israel but to kill Jews everywhere, she is silent.

Naomi Klein is a left-wing extremist and fanatic. She has no
place in a Vatican conference on climate change or on anything at all. One
would have thought that Communism was dead and buried. And yet, some political
and religious leaders are still irresistibly drawn to it.

No respectable political leader ought to enhance the
reputation of Naomi Klein. Not if he wants to remain respectable.

More Liberation Theology... always MORE. Because there's always more liberating we have to do!

Liberating from this, liberating from that. And on its face, it makes sense, as Christianity has always offered liberation from sin in Christ. After all, we're human beings -- we're always sinful with the attachments in our lives. The resurrected Christ vanquishes sin.

But Liberation Theology always struck me as a sort of Nirvana-like goal, not something distinctly Christian. Like all Leftism, it seems to be a game that's always rigged for more, more, more of the remedy. And if all that doesn't work, still more! Too much of a good thing is just enough.

The pope should never have recognized the "state" of Palestine and then brought Naomi Klein on board. Naomi Klein shouldn't be co-chairing anything at the Vatican.

The Liberators didn't really get into the spiritual element of Catholicism, choosing to use it as a screen (always a veil) for their radical political purposes. I like Pope Francis' Ignatian spirituality and mysticism, but I've been consistently disgusted with his politics and seemingly contrary, brash, loose comments on an array of traditionally hot-button Catholic issues. If you review the comments in their entire context, they make sense, but he's throwing candy at the press with his one-liners, which are what make the headlines. He's not playing these issues smartly. Choosing Naomi Klein is the most visible example of this nonsense.

I wonder how much the Vatican is paying dear Naomi for service as this esteemed chair? The worst part is that she's a ruthless social critic and radical feminist cum climate science "authority" now. How many social activism metamorphoses will she undergo? Being a Vatican chair and atheist must be a plum assignment. But the Liberation Theology types have never seen a conflict... the revolution they desire, whether supposedly Christian, while actually Marxist, is all the same.